RHYTHM and TIMING in Music

13 RHYTHM AND TIMING IN Music ERIC F. CLARKE Music Department University of Sheffield Sheffield, United Kingdom !. INTRODUCTION The aim of this chapter is to give an overview of research relating to the temporal dimension in music. In its entirety, this constitutes a very large body of work, despite the frequently repeated observation that time in music has received rather less attention than pitch (e.g., Kramer, 1988). This chapter therefore focuses primarily on small- to medium-scale temporal phenomena in music, the domain that would commonly be referred to as rhythm, rather than the larger-scale properties of form. The detailed temporal properties of performed music, often referred to as temporal microstructure, and the relationships between rhythm and movement are also considered. Although pitch may have had the lion's share of attention as far as both empirical and theoretical work in the psychology of music is concerned, there is nonethe- less a considerable amount of material on rhythm in music. Amongst this litera- ture, the work of Paul Fraisse stands out above the research of any other single individual in both its scope and the manner in which it foreshadows the preoccu- pations of a great deal of the more contemporary work in the area. The particular integrity and character of Fraisse's work makes it difficult to divide into the categories of this chapter, and as a consequence it is presented separately from more recent work. His work has also played an important part in stimulating and in- forming modem rhythm research, so it is appropriate to begin with it. !i. THE WORK OF PAUL FRAISSE The special character of Fraisse's work is in part attributable to the fact that it covers both musical issues and the more general field of time perception, and that Copyright 1999 by Academic Press. The Psychology of Music, Second Edition 473 All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 4"74 ERIC F. CLARKE he comes from a Piagetian tradition in which the relationship between perceptual capacities, sensorimotor organization, and human development is paramount. This results in a rather more holistic view than is found in most current work and incorporates a relationship with biology that is also rare today. Fraisse's work has been widely published (e.g., Fraisse, 1956, 1963, 1978, 1982, 1987), so the present account is confined to a distillation of the principal ideas without presenting the abundant supporting evidence that Fraisse amassed. Fraisse drew a primary distinction between the perception of time and the estimation of time. The former is confined to temporal phenomena extending to no more than about 5 sec or so, whereas the latter relies primarily on the reconstruc- tion of temporal estimates from information stored in memory. The boundary between these two corresponds to the length of the perceptual present, which he defined as "the temporal extent of stimulations that can be perceived at a given time, without the intervention of rehearsal during or after the stimulation" (Fraisse, 1978, p. 205). Rhythm perception, therefore, is essentially concerned with phenomena that can be apprehended in this immediate fashion and is also closely tied up with motor functioning. In studies of spontaneous tapping, Fraisse observed that by far the most ubiquitous relationship between successive tapped intervals was a ratio of 1"1 (i.e., isochronous or pendular motion). Fraisse regarded this as intimately connected with anatomical and motor properties--most notably the bilateral symmetry of the body, the pendular movements of the limbs in walk- ing and running, and the regular alternation of exhalation and inhalation in breath- ing. He showed that when subjects are asked to tap rhythmically, they produce a bimodal distribution of ratios between intertap intervals, with peaks around 1:1 and 2:1, whereas when they are asked to tap arhythmically they produce a more continuous distribution of intertap interval ratios, and the frequency with which a ratio appears declines in proportion to its value (i.e., larger ratios are more un- likely). Fraisse describes both arhythmic and rhythmic tapping as a break with the underlying tendency for pendular movement, but whereas there is no structure in the former case, the latter exploits a principle of identity or clear differentiation between time intervals. This principle of equality or differentiation creates two distinct categories of duration, according to Fraisse, which he terms temps longs and temps courts (long durations and short durations), which are not only quanti- tatively but also qualitatively different. Short durations do not extend beyond about 400 msec, and 2:1 ratios between successive intervals are found only between the two categories. ~ Temps longs have the property of true duration according to Fraisse (we are aware, or can become aware, of the passage of time during such an interval), whereas temps courts have the character of collection rather than duration: we have no real sense of the passage of time during each event, but are qt would be perfectly possible for a 2:1 ratio to exist within either category: an interval of 75 msec followed by 150 msec would be a 1:2 ratio within temps courts, and 500 msec followedby 1000 msec would be the same within temps longs. But Fraisse does not find this in his empirical data. 13. RHYTHM AND TIMING IN MUSIC 475 aware of the manner in which numbers of such intervals group together. The dis- tinctions presented here are succinctly expressed by Fraisse in the following passage: Rhythmic and arhythmic sequences both consist of a break with the natural tendency to equalize successive intervals of time. Arhythmia is characterized by inequalities between successive durations that decrease in frequency in proportion to their size. Rhythmic structures, on the other hand, consist of the interplay of two types of value of temporal interval, clearly distinct from one another (in a mean ratio of 1:2). Within each type the durations are perceptually equal to one another. The collection of shortest intervals appears, from initial results, to consist of durations less than 400 msec. (Fraisse, 1956, pp. 29-30. Author's translation) Although 400 msec appears here as the cutoff between the two categories of duration, elsewhere Fraisse cites 600 msec as an important value with analogous properties: it is what Fraisse terms the "indifference interval"mthat interval of time for which people's duration estimates are most veridical, showing neither systematic overestimations (as they tend to for shorter durations) nor underestima- tions (as they tend to for longer durations). 2 Fraisse claims that this has a direct relationship to the duration of the whole perceptual process, corresponding "to the continuation of two percepts with no overlapping and no interval" (Fraisse, 1978, p. 225). The link between "indifference" in perceptual judgment and the threshold between the two categories of duration in rhythmic structures (temps longs and temps courts), with their respective properties of duration and collection, is made clear here. To summarize, at the heart of Fraisse's contribution to an understanding of rhythm in music are the following: 1. The perceptual present as the dividing line between the direct perception of duration and its estimation. 2. The fundamental status of pendular motion and the close association between rhythm and movement. 3. The distinction between rhythmia and arhythmia, based on the distinction between a continuous and a bimodal distribution of duration ratios between successive time intervals. 4. The existence of a categorical distinction between two types of duration (temps long and temps court) in rhythm, in a mean duration ratio of 2:1, and with the quality of duration and collection, respectively. 5. A threshold between these two categories at a value around 400-600 msec, also associated with "indifference" in perceptual judgments. 6. The operation of two complementary principles (assimilation and distinction) that preserve both the integrity and distinctness of the two categories. 2There is considerable variability in the value given by different authors to the indifference interval. This may be due to the different methods that have been used to assess it, or may be because the phenomenon itself is unstable or even artifactual. 476 ERIC F. CLARKE !!!. FORM PERCEPTION The distinction that Fraisse draws between time perception and time estimation or construction allows a division between rhythm and form to be established. Musical form, understood as the sectional proportions of a work, might conceiv- ably be regarded as part of rhythm in music if one adopts a sufficiently inclusive definition of the term. Indeed, Cooper and Meyer (1960) do precisely that when they present an analysis in which a single set of rhythmic categories is applied to the first movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, ranging from single notes through all levels of the music up to the entire movement. The unbroken continu- ity of rhythmic notation implies that our response to note-to-note relationships is governed by the same principles and processes as is our response to the relationships between sections of the work, each of which lasts of the order of 5 min. Estimates of the perceptual present, which forms the boundary between direct perception and the memory-dependent processes of construction and estimation, are variable, but a value somewhere around 3-8 seconds is in agreement with a good deal of the available evidence. Crowder (1993), for example, following research by Cowan (1984, 1987), concurs with the proposal that there may be a very short auditory store 3 of around 250 msec, and a longer store, with a period of about 2-10 sec, with the two stores being the behavioral consequence of different perceptual/cognitive processes.

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